Morand, who owns a chain of shoe stores, told the AFP news agency that the ban is shameful, and blamed liberal parties for failing to counter what he described as right-wing scare tactics. The Swiss People's Party, which spearheaded the initiative to ban minarets on mosques, released an aggressive campaign including posters of women in face-covering burkas and minarets shaped like rockets.

The ban was all the more scandalous, Morand said, given that Switzerland encourages Arabs to "visit the country and to spend their money here."

Morand joins prominent Jewish leaders and the Vatican in condemning the referendum last month, when 53% of Swiss voters went to the polls to decide whether to outlaw the construction of any more minarets, although only four mosques in Switzerland have them. The amendment passed with 57% of the votes.

The Independent of London reported Monday that a group of prominent Swiss intellectuals is already preparing an initiative to overturn the ban, although many have speculated the new amendment will be struck down anyway by the European Court of Human Rights.

"Precisely because the Jewish community has firsthand experience of discrimination, it is committed to active opposition to discrimination and to action in favor of religious freedom and peaceful relations between the religions," two Swiss Jewish groups declared in a statement.

Swiss Jewry, the statement said, "takes seriously the fears of the population that extremist ideas could be disseminated in Switzerland. But banning minarets is no solution -- it only creates in Muslims in Switzerland a sense of alienation and discrimination."

The American Anti-Defamation League also released a statement condemning the ban as a "populist political campaign of religious intolerance."

"This is not the first time a Swiss popular vote has been used to
promote religious intolerance," the statement read.

"A century ago, a
Swiss referendum banned Jewish ritual slaughter in an attempt to drive
out its Jewish population," it said. "We share the ... concern that
those who initiated the anti-minaret campaign could try to further
erode religious freedom through similar means."

The executive director of the American Jewish Committee said the
group stands "firmly against these rabble-rousing politics in the name
of pluralism and democracy.”